The backplane of a telecommunications chassis provides an interconnection capability among the functional modules within the chassis. The architecture of a backplane affects various factors of operation for a piece of equipment in a telecommunications network. These factors include efficiency, scalability, and reliability. For efficiency purposes, the architecture of the backplane determines how a signal is to traverse and be routed across the backplane. The number of buses used in accomplishing a certain task also has an effect on the efficiency of the backplane. For scalability purposes, the architecture of the backplane determines how many modules may be supported within a chassis or string of chassis and how they are connected in relation to each other. The backplane architecture for a piece of telecommunications equipment determines the number of telephone calls that may be simultaneously supported. The sharing of buses and the signal transfer over each bus also has an effect on the scalability of the backplane. For reliability purposes, the architecture of the backplane determines the sparing capability of the telecommunications equipment in order to continue to provide operation in the event of a failure. Conventional backplane architectures do not effectively enhance each of these three factors. Therefore, it is desirable to provide a backplane architecture with improved efficiency, scalability and reliability characteristics.